Felting With Viscose Tops
I was tidying away some felt the other day and remembered that I’d planned to make some felt pieces like the textured nuno pieces I made, but with different fibres instead of fabric. I laid out a couple of pieces the same way, but different sizes. I laid out two layers of dyed viscose fibre, then 4 fine layers of 23 mic Merino. I felted and fulled the first piece, then got my bead board out to full it more. I fulled until it was quite firm, but not stiff/rigid:
I got the texture I was expecting:
Considering the textured nuno, I didn’t expect so much migration, probably because the soft/fine pieces I’ve fulled really hard with fibres before were using white 18.5mic Merino, I thought it’d be less obvious this time:
I changed my plans when I got to the felted stage of the first piece, it looked and felt so nice. So, I decided I would just felt the next piece ‘normally’. Even if I hadn’t already decided that, I don’t think I could have ‘ruined’ this piece by fulling it lots:
The colours and the sheen are just gorgeous, so is the softness and drape, even though it’s only a small sample:
Those ridges/crinkles are because I squeezed it in a towel, then hung on the line to dry! If you look at the blue parts you might see a crease along the edge too, it’s such a light piece, the pegs weighed it down and bent it. Here’s a close up:
You can see the differences in sheen and texture when the pieces are next to each other:
This is the soft piece on the template I used, it started out just a bit bigger than the small box it’s on top of:
And the small piece started out the size of the largest outline on the template:
11 thoughts on “Felting With Viscose Tops”
Whoa, what a difference! 😮
I know, it’s amazing! 🙂
Whoa indeed! I like the soft piece best – such a lovely sheen and texture.
Me too, it reminds me of sweet wrappers or the foil from old cigarette packets 🙂
Wow! You fulled the heck out of that first piece. What a difference.
Ha ha, I like that, it should be a thing: on a scale of ‘fulled softly’ to ‘fulled the heck out of’ 🙂
Shrinkage is crazy sometimes, isn’t it? Just goes to show that less wool really does cause more shrinkage and what a great example you have here! Wish I could touch them as they look really soft.
Yeah, I’m so glad I did the ‘plain’ one first, and it was the nicer one I decided to just felt/full normally. I’m glad I didn’t roll it in the towel, but scrunched it, I think the crinkley look shows its softness too.
Wow You are the fulling queen. Great samples.
Ha ha 🙂 It’s a lot easier to full a thin piece a lot than a thick piece!
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